This time the interview is with Andrew Becraft, also knows as Dunechaser. Andrew is know by his minifigures creations and as founder of one most well knowm LEGO blogs, The Brothers Brick .

Q: Let's talk a bit about yourself first: who are you? What do you do, where do you come from?

A:
Well, my name is Andrew Becraft, but many people may still know me best online as "Dunechaser." I live in Seattle with my wife and two dogs (a pug named Pugsly and a miniature dachshund named Josephine), and I work as a technical writer for Microsoft. I do call Seattle home, but I was born and raised in Japan, where I lived until I was 15 years old. Today, I'm a LEGO Ambassador, builder, and blogger. :-)

Q: How did you first made contact with LEGO? Do you remember your first LEGO set?

A:
Some of my earliest memories are of building with my dad, who had some of the early Expert Builder sets. I still have his instructions for 956 Auto Chassis, from 1977. But that was "Daddy's LEGO," and I got my own LEGO sets too. I don't remember the very first set I was given, but based on family photos from that time (1976-1977, when I was two or three), I believe some of my earliest sets were 194 LEGO Building Set with People/Family and 370 Police Headquarters.

Q: What is your favorite LEGO theme and what do you enjoy building the most?

A:
Due to "real life" time and space constraints, I don't build nearly as much as I want to, but I consider myself primarily a castle and space fan. I like to dabble in lots of themes, though, and this past year I built a few steampunk, microspace, castle, and post-apocalyptic creations.

But I don't think it's any secret that my real obsession is the minifig! I love all things minifig, and I love both to imagine new characters to build and to try recreating a real person in LEGO.

Q: Did you go through a dark age? (and why?)

A:
Because my brother Nathan is four and a half years younger than I am, he was just beginning to truly enjoy LEGO when I was starting high school (right after we moved to the United States in 1989). That kept me building, even though I didn't ask for any new sets or buy any myself for most of high school and college.

My wife and I got married between our third and fourth years in college, and moving all of my old LEGO into our tiny first apartment inspired me to see what new LEGO was available. This was in 1996, and the combination of the Ninjas theme (Japanese-themed LEGO!) and Adventurers (archaeology!) immediately brought me out of my "buying dark age."

Q: What attracts you most about LEGO so that you chose it as your hobby?

A:
The limitless possibilities! I'll also admit that LEGO taps into my deep-seated collecting instinct. Heh heh...

Q: Could you tell us something about the AFOL community in the United States?

A:
This is actually a bit difficult to answer, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was a lurker in the early online community for four or five years before I joined FBTB back in 2002, and it wasn't really until around 2005 that I even became truly aware of all the things LEGO fans were doing together at LUG meetings, fests, cons, and other events. To be honest, I know a lot more about the global online LEGO world than I do about the "offline" fan community here in the States (I only attended my first LUG meeting in 2006, and BrickCon in October of the same year).

Second, the LEGO fan community in the US is very diverse -- at least in terms of its interests (of course, most fans are guys). At LUG meetings and other fan events, I tend to hang out with the castle builders, whom I have the most in common with.

Q: How did you come across the 0937 Community?

A:
I think my answer is going to be the same as Hippotam/Marcin's answer to this question! An 0937 member linked to the old blog on Blogspot a couple years ago, and I wondered why all these people from Portugual were suddenly visiting the blog. :-D

Q: Where do you go for inspiration for your MOCs? And who do you have under the "Bookmarks" tab?

A:
I tend to rely on feeds (RSS or Atom) for updates to Brickshelf, Flickr, and blogs, so my LEGO bookmark bar in Safari is full of hundreds of feed URLs. For my own MOCs, I get a lot of inspiration by being a member of Builders' Lounge. Many of the best builders are members, and I can quickly see the latest from my favorite builders, and get useful feedback from them for my own creations.

Q: Could you tell us which is your favorite creation of all time? (self or not) Why?

A:
That's a tough one! I like many MOCs for very different reasons. I like Dave DeGobbi's Goliath airship for its sheer size and all its moving parts. In contrast, I love Nelson Yrizarry's vignettes for their simplicity and elegance. I deeply respect minifig customizers like Armothe for their skill and artistry. If I have to pick just one, I think my current favorite is Steve Vargo's Undead Army diorama.

Q: Which is your favorite LEGO Brick?

A:
Another tough question! Let's see... Aside from minifig parts? Again, this is a current favorite (subject to change at any time and without prior written or verbal notice), but I really like the 1x1x2/3 "cheese" slopes. They enable builders to add a level of detailed polish to both large and small MOCs that wasn't possible before, and even on their own they have lots of interesting possibilities.

Q: Can you explain the birth of The Brothers Brick blog?

A:
I was originally inspired to start my own blog by Bruce Hietbrink of VignetteBricks and Azumu of LEGO-BINGO. I called it "Dunechaser's Blocklog," and it was going to be a minifig blog mostly featuring my own MOCs. I soon started highlighting other people's minifigs, and then other people's MOCs, and after about a year, I asked Josh Wedin from Classic-Castle.com to join me to split the workload a bit. Since it was no longer just "Dunechaser's" blog, we held a contest and changed the name to The Brothers Brick (telling stories like The Brothers Grimm, except with LEGO -- and "Brick" also sort of works as a verb here).

Since then, we've added four more contributors and moved the blog to its own Web site, Brothers-Brick.com. This summer, the blog will be three years old! :-)

Q: What you think about the international blog scene?

A:
It's amazing how much the worldwide "blogosphere" has grown in the last two years! My own ignorance is partially to blame I'm sure, but my blogroll back in 2005 only had a handful of links -- all English or Japanese. Today, it seems like there's a great blog in nearly every language for which there's a sizable AFOL community -- Polish, German, French, and of course Portuguese!

Ultimately, though, LEGO is a visual medium. Bricks themselves are the words we use to communicate with each other in the universal language of our LEGO creations.

Flickr gallery .